Bogotá, Colombia. A place where the coffee is strong, the mountains are taller, and the political discourse is about as stable as a three-legged giraffe on a trampoline. But fear not, dear investors, for the recent defeat of the leftist candidate in Colombia's election is not a cause for alarm. Quite the opposite: it is a glorious reaffirmation that the world still makes a modicum of sense. The Great British Pound has not spontaneously combusted, and the executive jet of Lord Snap-Hockley of High Finance remains fuelled and ready for its quarterly jaunt to Bogotá's finest golf courses.
Colombia, that plucky little nation of cocaine, emeralds, and Nobel laureates, has chosen the path of fiscal responsibility over the siren song of free healthcare and nationalised oil. The new president, a man whose face is as tight as a City banker's budget spreadsheet, has promised to keep the doors open for foreign extraction. And by extraction, I mean the polite term for what happens when an international corporation decides that Colombia's natural resources are better off as a hole in the ground and a Swiss bank account.
The British, of course, are ecstatic. This means that the flow of high-grade Colombian coffee can continue to fuel the sanity of London's trading floors and that the risk of a communist-style land reform is about as likely as me ordering a non-alcoholic beverage. Our investments in the region are safe, which is to say that the dividends from Colombian mining operations will continue to fund the second homes of a select few in Surrey and enable the purchase of increasingly complex yachts that are definitely not compensating for anything.
But let us not be too cynical. This election marks a triumph for the forces of stability and the crushing defeat of that pesky idealism. The leftist candidate, a man who dared to suggest that the poor might deserve a slightly larger slice of the emerald pie, has been shown the door. The message is clear: in Colombia, as in British foreign policy, the only colour that matters is the green of a crisp British pound. Or the occasional 100-dollar note, if the deal is particularly oily.
The newspapers will call it a victory for democracy. I call it a victory for the bar at the Bogotá Country Club, where the gin is almost as good as the air of smug satisfaction. Our investments remain secure, which means the only thing we have to worry about is whether the new president's tie matches the shade of the national flag. Spoiler: it does not. But that's a minor error in this grand tapestry of global capital.
So raise a glass of something imported and expensive. The Colombian left has been defeated, and the world is once again safe for the free market. Unless, of course, you're a Colombian farmer with a reasonable sense of justice. In which case, you are probably too busy picking coffee to read this. Your loss, chum.
